It's been over 6 months since my last steemit blog. I intended to keep writing my NFL, poker, UFC, math, and logic blogs but I stopped for a few reasons: the main one being time. NBA season was starting and with NBA/NFL running concurrently I was working 80 hour weeks from the end of October onwards. I just didn't have time or energy to blog.

But additionally my blog started to feel like an ongoing brag post. At the outset, I began blogging about my NFL DFS play in order to introduce people to the game, give some basic advice, and keep a running journal to help me remember and catalogue mistakes I made. But after a few weeks of running hot and the growing reticence to give deeper advice with the possibility of opponents or current/potential high stakes players learning both about my game and improving their own, my blog was distilled down to mostly discussing results. Looking at my blog as an outside observer made me cringe a little bit. It was still interesting, but I despised reading the brags, and seeing them emanating from my own fingers was even worse.

Regardless, let me recap the last 6 months and outline what I'll be blogging coming up.

NFL DFS

NFL season continued to go well after week 7 (my last blog). I won 15 out of 19 weeks played, and all 4 were small losses. I booked a profit on all 6 sites and felt a large edge over opponents, but suspect my overall season was in the top 10% of my range of outcomes. I was very lucky to win as much as I did and to avoid major injuries week to week.

NBA DFS

From the beginning of the season, NBA cash games were dead. A combination of high rake, improved pricing, everyone knowing the must plays, and less recreational players meant games were tough to beat. Tournaments/GPPs still have value, but that's never been my focus, and I wasn't ready to pivot into a high variance form of gambling while competing against people who've had success in it for years. I played for 6 weeks, lost some money, took 3 months off, tried to play again after All Star break, and quickly quit again. I think as well as I ran in NFL I ran worse in NBA (bottom 5% outcome), but even if I had run average I'm unsure how much edge existed. I probably should have worked harder and played smaller, but the edge and fun were gone, so after a big NFL and a small losing stretch in NBA I took most of the season off.

But more than just the loss of my NBA income was a loss of hope for DFS: the game is dying much quicker than poker. What if I run as bad next NFL season as I did this NBA season? Will I even have a winning 2017?

Too many options, not enough commitment

From mid January through the end of March, I had free time to pursue any intellectual interests or projects I had put off indefinitely. I spent some time brushing up on programming, studied Spanish, spent some time playing chess, played a little poker, played some golf DFS, worked out some, read about new cryptocurrencies and invested more, but never fully committed to anything.

• my programming improved, but didn't reach a high enough level to do anything substantial with it.
• I'm more confident in my Spanish than I was 6 months ago, but I'm still far from fluent and fell off the wagon with my studies a few weeks ago.
• my chess game improved, but I had trouble focusing on areas that I struggled in and never put real work into it and stopped playing a few weeks ago.
• I won a little money playing poker, but didn't study hard enough or play enough hours to improve significantly. I just wasn't making enough to go back to doing it full time and I stopped playing a few weeks ago.
• golf DFS felt very much like NBA: tough to beat the rake and everyone was flipping with each other, so I quit after the Master's a few weeks ago.
• although I worked out 5-6 times a week, I was stagnating in my progress. My rock climbing wasn't improving, neither were my overall fitness levels.
• I made money in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but I'm trapped in that weird area between amateur investor and hardcore adopter where I know more than my friends, but not nearly enough to participate in discussions with programmers/developers/etc.

I just felt very lost: I had all these options available to me, and all these fun and potentially profitable interests I could pursue, but I bounced between them, aimlessly half-assing all of them and not seeing the results I wanted in any.

MLB DFS

So half because of boredom, and half because of an inability to carry forward gambling losses from a losing year to the next, I decided to grind MLB. I've had small periods of success in MLB in the past, but other than a 2.5 month period from July-September of 2015, I never fully committed to the grind. But without my NBA DFS ego, I'm able to grind small and analyze my play relative to others and search for mistakes. For the moment I am only playing cash games as I want to conquer those before adding GPPs.

After 4 weeks of playing, I'm up roughly $4500 and feel hopeful that I can slowly grind out profit. I have a spreadsheet keeping track of my results, but I wanted to start a daily blog: my lineups, what plays I missed on, the lineup I should have run in hindsight, and from time to time my results. Given the stakes I am playing and that I'm not nearly as strong of an MLB player as I am in NFL it won't be an insufferable endless brag post. So let's get started!

Draftkings 4/29

My lineup (roughly an hour after start):

P Brandon McCarthy P 9 100% 0 swap out
P Joe Musgrove P 100% 15.95 lock
C Yasmani Grandal 4 100% 0 swap out
1B Freddie Freeman 3 52% 15 lock
2B Rougned Odor 4 100% 0 lock
3B Joey Gallo 6 100% 0 lock
SS Corey Seager 2 100% 0 swap out
OF A.J. Pollock 1 100% 8 lock
OF Andrew Toles 1 100% 0 swap out
OF Mike Trout 3 100% 9

I had trouble choosing between Freddie Freeman and Paul Goldschmidt: I had them equally projected, and could fit either, so ultimately I split my contests 50/50 and played both. Most people just picked Freddie Freeman and he's having a big game so half my lineups are already in trouble.

Most people avoided Mike Trout today due to a tough matchup with Yu Darvish, but he's just a far better player than Ryan Braun or similarly priced guys, so any lineup avoiding him would have given up at least half a point from optimal. Joe Musgrove also wasn't popular: more people chose to take either the aforementioned Yu Darvish or Dan Straily.

This is the chalk lineup:

P Dan Straily (R) MIA 9 $9,200
P Brandon McCarthy (R) LAD 9 $8,900
C Yasmani Grandal (S) LAD 4 $3,300
1B Freddie Freeman (L) ATL 3 $5,100
2B Jonathan Villar (S) MIL 1 $4,500
3B Joey Gallo (L) TEX 6 $3,500
SS Corey Seager (L) LAD 2 $4,500
OF Andrew Toles (L) LAD 1 $2,900
OF A.J. Pollock (R) ARI 1 $4,500
OF Nomar Mazara (L) TEX 2 $3,600

Had I seen this lineup, I maybe would have played it: it only gave up half a point, and played all the popular plays. Unlike GPPs, playing the chalk is important in cash games. A simple example explaining why: suppose I make a strong lineup with 2 unique players in a 100 man 50/50, and that I could have made a similarly projected lineup with 2 high owned players instead. If the unique players go off, then people who played the high owned guys can still finish top 50%, but if the high owned players crush, then I am going to have a tough time cashing this 50/50. It's never a great idea to fade someone above 50% ownership if possible.

So even if I had surmised that my lineup was so much better than I had to play it, then at the very least I should have played Freddie Freeman over Goldschmidt because the chalk lineup had Freddie Freeman (he was $100 cheaper so Goldschmidt didn't fit), so he would more likely be higher owned. Mindlessly splitting the flip spot was fine, but playing the popular choice was more precise.

Fantasydraft 4/29

P Brandon McCarthy $17,400 0.00
P Dan Straily $17,600 17.60
IF Paul Goldschmidt $10,200 7.00
IF Freddie Freeman $9,900 15.00
IF Yasmani Grandal $6,400 0.00
OF Mike Trout $10,800 9.00
OF A.J. Pollock $8,700 8.00
OF Andrew Toles $5,700 0.00
UTIL Corey Seager $8,700 0.00
UTIL Jaff Decker $4,200 2.00

Because of the lineup construction on FantasyDraft having infield spots rather than positions, I was able to play both Goldschmidt and Freeman. I'm still the only person who played Mike Trout, but I'm not too concerned about it. My second favorite lineup had Joe Musgrove and Adrian Gonzalez over Dan Straily and Jaff Decker, but I had this projected a smidgen higher, and it allowed me to diversify pitchers. The highest owned player I don't have is Ryan Braun (45%), but I'll take Trout over Braun for roughly the same salary at 1/4 the ownership and am fine with it, unlike Goldschmidt vs Freeman it isn't a flip. Everyone else on my team is at least 30% owned.

Yahoo 4/29

I had the toughest time making a lineup on Yahoo of all 3 sites today. Brandon McCarthy, Grandal, Pollock, and Delino Deshields, were locks, but picking a 2nd pitcher, 1b, 2b, 3b, SS, and 3rd OF all had options.

SP2: Darvish or Straily
1b: Goldschmidt, Freeman, Adrian Gonzalez
2b: Odor or Villar
3b: Arenado, Joey Gallo, Travis Shaw, Adonis Garcia
SS: Corey Seager, Carlos Correa
OF3: Carlos Gonzalez, Andrew Toles

Ultimately I decided to split the lineups. Ran half with Straily/Goldschmidt/Odor/Seager/Arenado/Toles, and half with Darvish/Gonzalez/Villar/Seager/Gallo/Toles. You can't have everyone and no matter what you can second guess your choices when they are outperformed by others. I do wish I had Freddie Freeman and Villar on the same team, but figuring out minute edge between close teams is not the most productive part of the DFS process. It's intellectually stimulating to separate that last 1% and important to try and be precise, but more edge is gained from a strong process than minor nitpicking. Freeman and Goldschmidt were the same price on Yahoo, so I took Goldschmidt (whereas Freeman was cheaper on DK) because I figured my opponents would possibly diversify by taking Freeman on DK and Goldschmidt on Yahoo. Regardless, I made solid choices in both lineups and you can't set the nuts every day.

I'll answer any suggestions or comments below. Hope ya'll have had a good 6 months!

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My name is Ryan Daut and I'd love to have you as a follower. Click here to go to my page, then click Follow in the upper right corner if you would like to see my blogs and articles regularly.

I am a professional gambler, and my interests include poker, fantasy sports, football, basketball, MMA, health and fitness, rock climbing, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.